03/30/2012

Timeshare Resort King Wynn Invests in China | Transfer Smart

Las Vegas Casino king Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts already has the most profitable casino in the former portugese colony of Macau on the coast of China.

Conservative Chinese government is against gambling, but there have been pushes by western investors such as Wynn and other billionaire developers like Sheldon Adelson to bring casinos inland. Chinese people are able to participate in state-run lotteries and small, subversive online sports waging. But there is a movement to bring casinos into the heart of China, into major cities like Shenyang and Shanghai in the north, or even Beijing.

The profits in Macau have been undeniable. The cities casinos took in $33.5 billion in 2011, and Wynn’s Macau casino now makes up 69% of his company’s revenue, even though only 30% of its assets are there. Gambling is officially illegal in China, but like Native American reservations in the United States, historical factors have led to a kind of grey area for casino investors.

Mr. Wynn is doing his best to be a patron of the Chinese people. He paid $10 million for a Hongwu-era vase which he donated to the Macau government. He donated $135 million to the University of Macau last year, the largest single donation ever given to a Chinese university.

One challenger to Mr. Wynn is the man who has made more money than any other American over the last three years, Sheldon Adelson. He went from having “just” $3 billion in 2009 to $28 billion today. Mr. Adelson is a timeshare, resort, hotel tycoon in his own right, going from lower-class New Englander to world developer by buying condominiums in Massachusetts, developing them into hotels, and eventually getting into the casino business with his Las Vegas Sands corporation.

Today, he owns half of the casino contracts in Singapore, and Merril Lynch has forecast that Singapore’s two casinos will be more profitable than all of Las Vegas’ combined.Adelson beat Wynn to Macau’s money first, debuting the Sands Macao in 2004, two years before the Wynn Macau.Neither man should lose money on their projects in the long run. But the development of the auto industry, the gaming industry, and tourism both to China and by its people into Europe, the Americas and beyond do mean the Chinese economy is gearing up to be tops in the world.